


Dawn

by Fierceawakening



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 13:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6471595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fierceawakening/pseuds/Fierceawakening
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at what would happen if a victorious TFP Megatron revived Cybertron... and then found the Allspark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as background for an RP (hence the present tense), but I decided it worked as a large piece of its own.

Megatron looks out over rows of lifeless frames. They stand in ranks, a cold and silent phalanx. 

Most resemble Vehicons, but not all are identical. Not here. Not now. Not when Megatron needs a true army, not a mass of grunts whose only purpose is to overwhelm enemies who should have laid down and died millennia ago.

These frames have purpose: some light and fast, some heavy and well-armored. All come with weapons built into them. Megatron might never have believed in caste, but these will know, spark-deep, that they are built for war and fire.

They will not remain the same anyway. They are Decepticons, built as much to find their own destinies as to serve the will of the one who gives them life. Megatron would not want it any other way.

But all their frames bear the rudiments of wings. That he gives to all of them – to choose or not, as they will, once they earn the right to whatever modifications they might want. 

He knows what it is like to be denied wings, and have no choice to bear them. 

He has no illusions about these mechs. Once they are prepared to fight, to defend, to conquer – vast numbers of them will die. Not every mech proves worthy, in a world that protects none.

But he will not deny them, all the same.

The living Decepticons are all here too, crowded around, in careful and respectful file themselves – but they are alive, and they are restless, and their eagerness and fear shows in their small movements.

Megatron understands their fear. A rumor went through the Autobot ranks some years ago that the Allspark created only Autobots to fight in their war.

Megatron has never believed it. 

And Megatron has had plenty of practice, now, at bending powerful artifacts to his will.

The Allspark sits beside him, a blue, rippling mass, its light searingly bright.

“Decepticons!” he calls in a ringing voice. “We have won our war. Restored our home. Called our kindred home to us, from the far reaches of this universe. 

“And now we stand at the beginning of an era. Now, at last, our world belongs to us – and now at last our people can be reborn.”

So saying, he lifts the Allspark from its mounts. Its spark-heat sears his hands long chilled by the unnatural cold of dark energon. And the hiss of Unicron, ever present in his mind, grows to a loud roar that dims even his own voice.

It doesn’t matter.

In his vision, there is only light. Light so bright he can determine nothing else.

He shutters his optics and imagines what he cannot see: rows upon rows of fiery red light, as the optics of his newborn warriors online for the first time.

The energy pours free from the Allspark and lances toward the lifeless frames. He senses it and roars, half in triumph and half with his need to guide it, to shape it, to form it to the will that has driven him and his people to the brink of annihilation.

A wave of pain hits him, the wailing agony of the demon hiding in his blood, and he fights to stay upright but crashes to his knees. His palms burn, and blacken, and he wonders if the thing he holds might melt them. But he forces his hands up, lifting the Allspark above his head, the radiant light pouring from the thing he holds.

He waits. Spark after spark after spark. His hands ache, a dull pain beneath the scorching burn, and he lowers his hands.

He opens them, almost without realizing what he has done, and the Allspark hovers in front of him, through its own power.

He rises to his feet, aching and weary. Hundreds of bright lights stare back at him, curious, confused, and perhaps awed.

He smiles. 

“Welcome to our world,” he says.

###

Her optics flicker online.

“Welcome to our world,” a voice says.

She stands in a crowd of mechs like her, arranged in orderly lines.

 _Ranks_ , something tells her, and with that thought comes awareness of something else: weapons, tucked away under the plating of her arms, fed with the same the rest of her frame. She feels a sudden urge to test it, to shift her hands into the blades and guns she knew she’d found there.

But with that desire comes confusion. Where is she? Who are these others?

Who is speaking? And, for that matter, what is her own name?

She casts a nervous glance at the others. A few look back at her, the same confusion in their flickering optics.

And yet, under it all, something like eagerness whirls within her spark. This world is – new. Golden and gleaming.

And so, it seems, is she.

“Newsparks,” the voice says again. An old voice, deep somehow, with time behind it. That makes her want to listen – want to know what this one knows.

“I am Megatron. Leader of the Decepticons. Ruler of the reborn Cybertron. It is I who gave you life – and I who call upon you to serve a purpose.”

Ruler? Her optics widen to study him. His frame is massive, battered, scarred. The energy pulses through her weapons systems again, eager for an enemy to test itself against.

This one has done what she hopes to. She would have heard that in his voice even if she couldn’t see it in the ancient frame.

Reborn Cybertron? A pang seizes her spark. What must that have been like – to see a world given life? These others, these – older ones, with their battered frames stained with dust and dirt, so unlike her own – did they see it?

She envies them, if they did.

“Our world suffered for an age,” he says. “A Council of feeble mechs ruled it. Oppressed its fighters and its visionaries in hopes to prolong their own power, to stave off their inevitable fall. In their weakness they preserved themselves by hiding our own strength from us. 

“Some of us they altered – twisting wings into armor, reforging metal designed for speed and grace into heavy plating that could withstand hard labor and harsh conditions. I myself was sparked nameless. I slaved in the mines, for masters I was told were my betters.”

She frowns. This makes no sense If this mech could revive worlds, _why_ –?

“I rose against them, with the aid of a friend. A mech I thought had turned against them – but who betrayed me, in the end. The ruling Council named him Prime, and gave him the name Optimus.”

 _Prime._ The word stirs something in her processor. An ancient memory, a twinge of reverence.

She looks around at the others again. Their optics flicker just the same as hers. Prime. Is that the title of a friend, or of an enemy?

“A Prime is meant to be a guardian. To protect Cybertron above all else. But they set him against me, instead. So I fought him – a mech I had called brother – and his followers, the Autobots.”

A guardian – that made sense. Her processor hums with recognition. But this world – her kin, arrayed around her – these older ones, too, watching and waiting. Were they not his duty to protect?

Megatron’s optics brighten and he snarls. She feels it, her spark twisting, an anger she knows but doesn’t understand. Her engines growl, and the newborn phalanx surrounding her echoes the sound.

“War consumed our world, and drove us all into exile, Autobot and Decepticon alike. To keep me from claiming Cybertron – and any other world – Optimus cast away the Allspark. The very thing that gave you life. Our home and our people were barren – until now.”

His grin widens, a ring of bright sharpened blades in his mouth.

It isn’t welcoming.

She doesn’t want it to be.

“And at the last, when we finally had the chance to revive Cybertron itself – he destroyed the very tool that might have restored it.”

A roar of engines answers him again. Her own and all her brothers’. _How could that be?_

“Understand this: I and the others you see here fought a long and bitter war. Of a world once blessed with millions of sparks, only we remain.”

Her spark seizes, frozen within her chest. _How could that be?_

She is young – newly born herself, from what her new lord says.

She can’t imagine it. Shouldn’t have to. Not now, not here, on what must be the first day of her life.

She doesn’t know what to call the feeling. Despair, anger, shock. She only knows the thought makes her feel _cold, so cold_ , and her frame twitches as if she could drive the thought away.

Megatron holds up a hand. She stills, the response automatic, and feels her spark begin to spin again.

“And I will call you to war as well. Before the Council’s ‘Golden Age,’ Cybertron was a world of warriors. Conquerors. The center of a vast empire, the fear and envy of the galaxy.”

Her spark spins in a mix of fear and anticipation. _He made us to fight. Will we be ready?_

“I have restored our world, given new life to our people – and I would see us earn the glory we lost.”

He wavs a hand tipped with deadly claws. “We were once conquerors. But we were also poets. Scholars. Visionaries. These things were stolen from us – on the theory that one cannot be powerful and wise all at once.

“I say we can. I fought for hundreds of thousands of years to create such a world. To rebuild its people.

“You will be trained. You will be taught. We had nothing. We pieced together the art of strategy and the techniques of fighting in deathmatch arenas where we died for the amusement of our true enemies. But we are here, and we have won, and we will teach you.

“I restored our world for those of us who survived to see it born – and to all of you, born with its promise.”

Someone cries out, a wordless sound, like a battle cry. She’s reasonably sure it isn’t her.

Someone beside her looks at her, still nervous. He twitches his wings, raises his fist, and screams, all hope and rage and something deep and sorrowful that no newspark should feel. 

Her engines thrum and her optics brighten. 

She raises her arm.

The energy tucked away in her weapons systems blazes with a fiery heat.

She opens her mouth and takes up the cry.


End file.
